Fiction Fans

Author Interview: Awakened by Laura Elliott

• Episode 193

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Your hosts welcome Laura Elliott to talk about her debut gothic horror novel, Awakened. They discuss unethical medical research, fraught family dynamics, and toxic love triangles.


Find more from Laura:

https://x.com/TinyWriterLaura

https://www.instagram.com/tinymeetsworld/


Find us on Discord / Support us on Patreon

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris”
- Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License



Lilly:

Hello and welcome to Fiction Fans, a podcast where we read books and other words too. I'm Lily.

Sara:

And I am Sarah, and I am so pleased that today we are talking with Laura Elliot about her new novel, awakened.

Laura:

Thank you for having me.

Sara:

Yeah. It's a pleasure to have you on.

Lilly:

We're so excited to talk with you about your book, but before we get started, what's something great that happened recently?

Laura:

This is actually a very easy question for me because we had the book launch for awakened last night, which is also why I, I know nobody can see me, but it's also why I'm looking a little bit rough today because I was up late last night celebrating the book

Lilly:

That's the beauty of an audio only podcast.

Laura:

exactly.

Sara:

yes.

Lilly:

Sarah, how about you?

Sara:

My blueberry bushes are starting to ripen, so I've had the first blueberries off of them.

Lilly:

I'm so jealous. My blueberries are just like not, not there.

Sara:

This is the third year that I've had them, I think. And one of the plants has some blueberries, the pink lemonade. Blueberry plant has very few blueberries, and the other one, I don't remember what, what kind it is, is just like absolutely covered. So I'm hoping that I can get like a couple of nice handfuls of, of fruit.

Lilly:

Lovely. Well, my good thing was going to be that I got a blister, but it's actually that my blister has already healed. So double good thing. We were doing some home improvement projects and so I felt very like capable and I did a productive thing. I got a blister. I haven't had one since like elementary school on the monkey bars.

Laura:

I was working hard.

Lilly:

Yeah, I did a thing and now it's already healed. So even better. Clearly it was not a very severe one.

Laura:

You just say you're a fast healer and actually you were working so hard it knew it needed to heal really quickly.

Lilly:

I love that. Perfect. And what is everyone drinking for the recording today? I inspired by the characters in our book. There's an awful lot of wine drinking. So I have a pinot noir actually out of a bottle and not a box for once. Very fancy. Yes.

Sara:

is a change.

Lilly:

But it does have a screw top. So I mean, I'm still Lily.

Laura:

Well, I'm jealous of your wine, but as I was drinking wine last night, I've moved on to tea in a very British fashion. This is my evening cup of tea.

Lilly:

Lovely.

Sara:

I considered doing tea because it's delightfully gray here today, but I decided that I too, in honor of this book would drink wine.

Laura:

I love that the book's already inspiring wine drinking. It was not intended, but it's a great.

Lilly:

I, I feel like white wine specifically is what comes up the most, although maybe that's just what stood out to me. But that's not what I had in the house, so, and

Laura:

will forgive you.

Lilly:

Oh, good. Good. This is actually a book podcast, not a blueberry and or wine podcast. So has anyone read anything good lately? Like other than of course, the book we are about to discuss at length?

Laura:

I just finished Leach by Hyron Ennis, which is a weird gothic. Dystopia in a secondary world, and it was super, super weird, but ticked all of my boxes. I don't think it's gonna be one for everyone, but I was reading it like, yes, this is my brand of weird.

Sara:

I think that's a title I have thought about suggesting to you, Lily. It's not something I, so I'm full, full disclosure. I enjoyed this book, but I'm not like a horror novel person or anything. So it's, it's typically not my genre, but yeah, that is, that is something that I thought you might like Lily.

Lilly:

I feel it sounds familiar. I feel like I've heard of it. But I'm not quite as plugged in as you to book news, but I, yeah, it does sound like something I would love. But I mostly spent this last week reading Awake, oh, sorry, Sarah, did you have an answer?

Sara:

No, I don't

Lilly:

Okay. assumed, but maybe I shouldn't have. Speaking of horror. Awakened. What the fuck.

Laura:

That is exactly the response I wanted. Thank you.

Lilly:

So before we dive into our conversation too much Laura, would you give our listeners just like a quick elevator pitch for this book?

Laura:

So awakened is a gothic sci-fi horror dystopia. I can't stick to one single, single genre. They're almost together. It is set in 2063 in the Tower of London after a group of scientists designed a neural chip so that people could go without sleep. And unsurprisingly, that has not gone well for humanity.

Sara:

I love sleep. And so the, the core concept of this novel, I was like, no. How could I just, I wanna nap all the time. How could anyone wanna take that away?

Laura:

This entire book is basically propaganda for naps. It has to be said.

Sara:

Yes. And I'm here for that, like.

Lilly:

Well, you just mentioned a huge breadth of genres that we can find in this novel, and we found that in many ways this book is almost more about the ethics of medical testing first and science fantasy second. Can you like tell us a little bit more of that, that blend of what seems like very different themes?

Laura:

I think when I was starting to write a gothic novel medicine comes up a lot, a lot in the gothic. It's, it's the concept of, you know, madness where we draw the line between monstrosity and nature, how far we should step over it. As soon as I knew that I was going to write a book where sleep was stolen, I knew it had to be gothic. And from there, obviously. Science had to come into it because I, I decided very early on it wasn't gonna be fantastical. It was going to be slightly more on the sci-fi end. So yeah, they blended quite naturally. But you are right, there are, there are a lot of genres in there.

Lilly:

I actually, I have to say this book probably perfectly hit my personal definition for science fiction. It is about technology and also. what it means to be human and exploring that, and to me, like having those two elements. Yeah, there are also horror elements and some, some fantasy elements, but to me this like hits science fiction perfectly on the head. Although I also acknowledge that I have a weird definition of sci-fi

Laura:

I love it. I think we should adopt a definition of science fiction.

Lilly:

to me, it's like I, I latch very hard onto Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel. It's like that has informed everything else, so

Laura:

Yeah, I mean, awakened was definitely informed by Frankenstein as well, so you're not imagining that all. I think it definitely fits your, if we're talking, Frankenstein is the first sci-fi novel, then Yes, awakened fully fits the sci-fi definition.

Lilly:

absolutely.

Sara:

So this book also feels very timely in the sense that like some of the themes from this book, chronic illness and exploitative technology ha came into broad awareness like before publication with long COVID. And then the advent of like AI fanaticism did these events. Affect or inform your writing process at all, or is it just happenstance that.

Laura:

I actually had the idea for awakened in 2016, but I was a bit too sick to write it, so you will see the thread of chronic illnesses is very much taken from my life. I was too sick to start. I started in 2019 and then as you say, the pandemic happened. So it feels sort of like I wished on a Monkey's PO for my book to be successful and relevant. And what I got was a pandemic that made it really suddenly relevant as I was writing it. So that's, you know, apologies for that. If that was my fault. I'm really sorry. You're right. Things have. More relevant as I was writing it. I think I finished the first draft in 2022 and sat there and went, oh, this is getting less sci-fi and more like political commentary, which is a little bit disturbing.

Lilly:

Not like this.

Laura:

Yeah, I didn't want this, this was a warning. It's like, you know, it's, scientists saying they're inventing the torment nexus from the novel. Do not invent the torment nexus. And, you know, that's kind of what's happened.

Lilly:

You, you mentioned your own experiences and in the, the marketing materials that we read before this book it talks a little bit about how your, your own illness has informed your process, but I noticed that it's actually the main character's mother in the novel who experiences. Those things. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about, I mean, first person main character is always so close, and so I thought that was an interesting writing technique.

Laura:

Uh, Yeah, I think it was because the first person perspective was so close, and I think there is a slight distancing measure on my part that I. Thea's mother's illness is very close to me, so putting that a little bit further away from me in the novel. I found it easier to write that way. But also there's a very practical reason in that I needed to show the severity and to write a novel where the character has agency and is that severe would also be really, really difficult. You know, she can't move, so it could have been even more introspective. It could have been a complete inner monologue of her just lying there with everything happening around her. But I'm not sure I could have made that work for the genre I was writing in. So yeah, two reasons. One is. A little bit too close to me, push it a little bit away. And the second is just practically, it's quite difficult to write from the perspective of a character that's bedridden if you also want there to be a, a little bit of action in there.

Lilly:

Yes.

Sara:

There's also in this book a lot of discussion around consent in regards to medical testing and whether the ends of saving many lives justify the means of like unethical procedures. Can you talk a little bit about incorporating those conversations into the novel?

Laura:

Yeah, that again, grew out quite naturally. As I started to write about the technology, it was like, okay, well they have consented to this, many of the people who got the neural chip consented, but what does that mean if it's not been tested properly? What does that mean if they felt like they were forced into it? Because jobs and things, you know, started to make that more necessary. So that blurring of consent, again, it's, it seems to be a huge part of the Gothic as well, where you. You, you explore the border places, and I think this novel includes a lot of gray areas. It, it includes that murky point, the lines you step back and forth across, over. And I don't think any of the characters, maybe one or two, but I don't think many of the main characters stand firmly at good or bad. I think they're, they're a blend of many things.

Lilly:

We do have some questions about that that are gonna have to wait a minute.

Laura:

I look forward to.

Lilly:

Yes, so we, we've talked a lot about some of the themes in this book, but the, the actual storyline that we get has three, I would say three different timelines overall. We have our post apocalypse, what I'm gonna call present day, not calling the present day post apocalypse or anything. But we have flashbacks to Faye's childhood with her chronically ill mother. And then that also sort of blends into the beginning of her research career. And then we also get some insights into the history of medical testing. Can you tell us a bit about how these threads all build on each other over the course of the story?

Laura:

I think when I started thinking about Thea as a character, I saw her as someone who was both very driven and also. A victim of circumstance almost as much as her mother is. So what I find found interesting about her was how her experience as a young carer, but also as a scientist, ended up with her moving from a place where she felt victimized into somewhere where she actually had the potential to victimize. So that's how that links together for me, seeing how she sort of cross, we, going back to crossing lines is seeing how she crosses that line from the person who is acted upon to the person who. And I think the history started to tie that together. You can see where, where she steps from one into the other. I think.

Lilly:

Absolutely. And again, that's a conversation for just a minute from now and how that kind of plays out on the page. You mentioned, both of them being sympathetic characters. And I thought it was really masterful how really all of the characters we see and there's not a huge cast, right? There's, I'm not gonna count, but like maybe five or six different people in our little survivor's colony that we follow. And I really loved how you sort of slow dripped the background information for each of these characters and really gave the reader some insight into why they are the way they are, except for maybe Dolly.

Laura:

Yeah, I did feel a little bit bad about that. I did feel that, do feel that Dolly didn't get as much of a backstory as the others. There was a version of the story where she played a little bit of a bigger part towards the ending. But in the end, I couldn't make it work from Thea's perspective. So, yeah, my apologies to Dolly. She is.

Lilly:

I have to admit, I love to hater, so I didn't mind, but I did feel like, oh.

Sara:

I mean, it's, it's hard though because since it is first person, like people don't spend the same amount of time thinking about everyone they interact with, so it like, it makes sense.

Laura:

it does make sense, and thank you for that. Yeah. It'll say within the universe of the novel, it does make sense. To be fair, I think Dolly initially started out as my stand in for, what I was seeing in the pandemic that. Certain people couldn't adapt to the change. There were some people who really were like, okay, we can adapt to this change for a temporary measure and we can, you know, project forward and say one day this is going to improve and one day we will, excuse me. Be back out into the world again, and there were lots of people who just couldn't, could not adapt at all. Dolly was sort of my standin for that. She's, she's the one who can't accept what's happened and she just, yeah, she sort of crumbles under that and becomes very, a very annoying counterpoint for Thea, because Thea's very practical and very driven and Dolly winds her up. I think we can say, let's say.

Lilly:

Yeah, well, I can think of about a thousand new questions that I've just come up with, but before we can get into our spoiler conversation, my last question is actually for Sarah who should read this book?

Sara:

You should read this book if you want a. Dark fantasy sci-fi dystopian setting with themes of like morality and ethics. And if you want to, want to take a nap, yes, in a good way.

Lilly:

yeah. I don't think medical horror is like the right genre for this book, but if you like medical horror, you would probably like this book.

Sara:

There are definitely aspects of medical horror, so if that's something that appeals to you as a reader, then I, I think this is a good book for you. This episode of Fiction Fans is brought to you by Fiction Fans.

Lilly:

That's us! We really appreciate our patrons, because otherwise we fund this podcast entirely ourselves.

Sara:

Patrons can find weekly bonus content, monthly exclusive episodes, and they have free access to our biannual zine, Solstitia.

Lilly:

You can find all of that and more at patreon. com slash fictionfanspod. Thank you for all of your support.

Sara:

The remainder of this episode contains spoilers.

Lilly:

So we absolutely loved the reveal that Thea's mother had been a sleepless all along.

Sara:

That was so good.

Lilly:

Oh my God.

Laura:

I'm so glad you didn't see it coming, because you can never tell when you write a twist because you always know it's coming. So I have to rely on readers telling me they couldn't see it coming.

Lilly:

Well, we had, I, like I was texting Sarah while I was reading this, right? I was like, the whole point was to cure her mother. Why didn't she give her the chip? I don't understand. And then it was answered. In fact, she had, and

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

I don't like, I didn't make that connection at all, but when it happened, I was like, of course. Oh my God. Of course.

Laura:

of course she gave it to her. How did.

Lilly:

Yeah.

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

However, because Theo was sort of in denial about it, we, the reader didn't actually get to see any of that because of that first person perspective. So can you tell us a little bit about using the format of that, like journal entry, first person, POV, to guide the reader's experience through the story?

Laura:

Yeah, I think we touched on it earlier in the first person. It's a close perspective. You only ever can see through their eyes. There's no pulling back from the narrator, and I think throughout. You are aware the is an unreliable narrator. You know, I think Vladimir tells her a lot of times you're a liar. But I don't think because she won't accept that she's lying to herself about things, the reader has no idea until she's willing to admit what she's hiding from herself and what she refuses to put on the page. I really enjoy first person for that. I enjoy that you can sort of pull the rug out for wonder people and say, yeah, that character you've been following, you shouldn't have trusted them. That was. That was a mistake. I'm really sorry.

Sara:

It was such a good use of first person.

Lilly:

It, it works so well. I, I often get frustrated with first person when it, sometimes it feels like it hides things artificially, and you're like, well, especially if it's just someone's internal monologue, when it's a journal entry, you get a lot more leeway with that kind of thing, right? Like, what's someone willing to put on the page? But if someone's just thinking to themselves and they're like, I have this master plan that I'm just not gonna think about for a chapter and a half,

Laura:

Yeah, that is annoying actually, because you're like, no, you'd be thinking about it. This is your internal monologue.

Lilly:

Yeah. You're just not thinking about it. Just so, I don't know. Dumb awful. But with this, the, the journal format, I think like really wonderfully gets around that, and I like, it didn't feel forced. It was just like, oh my God. Of course. Of course.

Laura:

I'm so glad, I'm so, so glad. And again, we'll, we'll go back to what we said earlier in the Frankenstein thing. It's, it's, it's that gothic sci-fi romantic tradition, isn't it? It's the, you see from different perspectives. It's all first person. I mean, you see in Dracula as well, don't you? It's a great method for, for that kind of story, I think.

Lilly:

Oh, speaking of Dracula, okay, hold on. Not yet though. Not yet.

Sara:

Okay, so one of the most horrifying moments in this book to me was probably Miriam's forcible Chip Insertion, which happens off the page kind of, but we got the tail end of it and it. To me, it really beautifully illustrated the point that you had been making throughout this whole book of like, doctors not listening to their patients and particularly not listening to their female patients. And just like, yeah, it was, oh, it was chilling. It,

Laura:

I'm really glad you said that because that for me is the, the purest moment of horror in the entire book is, is when you see Miriam and you suddenly realize what's been done to her. Because I think for me, she's the character, whereas Thea can't accept a lot of her life. She just has to put the blinkers on and work. Miriam's one of those characters who really fully accepts herself and accepts herself as she is and accepts other people as they are. So I think for all of the characters. To know that it's her that's been changed for somebody else's wants. I think that for me is like the sight of the horror as well.

Sara:

And she makes a huge point about, or I mean, she, she expresses at multiple points, like she's happy the way she is. Like it's, there's no problem with her. There's a problem with the world around her that doesn't accept her. And so for that to be quote unquote fixed is just awful. It's heart wrenching.

Laura:

Yeah, I, yeah, it, that was, that is exactly what it was. It was intended to be, and I'm so pleased that it, I mean, I'm sorry, but I'm also pleased

Sara:

yeah, yeah. I mean, you did it really well. I minute of it. You did it really well.

Laura:

that is kind of review.

Lilly:

It. I thought that was especially poignant too, because it came after Thea refused to do the chip operation for Michael, I think was the doctor's name. Yes. Thank you. Because he like fully informed, if anyone can have fully informed consent, it was Michael in that moment. He knew exactly what the side effects could be or if you can even call them side effects, but the consequences could be, and Thea said, no, I will not do this. And then from there to go. Okay. Well in that case,

Laura:

Yeah. Yeah, Michael's tricky one because he, he is in many ways the primary architect of why it starts to go wrong. You can sort of understand, understand why he is, but I think The's the's feeling of betrayal over what he's done means she's just, no, this is she. She basically strikes it from any possibility that she could be involved in this. Further, once it happens to Miriam, she's like, no, this is bad. Obviously, this is bad.

Lilly:

Yeah.

Laura:

I mean, it's taken her an entire book to get there. But

Lilly:

I do love the, like the, the roaming monsters of the apocalypse. Not, not enough for Thea. No, it was Miriam was the last

Laura:

Miriam was the straw that broke the camel's back. She's like, okay, we've, we've got sleepless monsters. The world's ended, but you messed with Miriam. Like, seriously?

Lilly:

Yeah. Anonymous donor. That's fine.

Laura:

Yeah. I mean, yeah. A.

Lilly:

I mean, not fine, but yeah.

Laura:

But not quite as impactful.

Sara:

I mean, to be fair, I think it takes the entire book for the, to to work up to the point where what happens to Miriam would be the final straw.

Laura:

Yeah, I think so as well. She's, she's going on a journey. It's taking her a while. But she does have very good reasons. You know, she's still so committed to, to fixing what's gone wrong with her mom. And I think at that point, when it happens to Miriam as well, she's also sort of accepted that. There might not be a better path for her mom. She's gonna have to risk it one of two ways, and neither's without its problems.

Lilly:

Well, we also sort of see her journey in her relationship with Michael, because in, in the very beginning we see in the flashbacks there was like quite a bit of, I would say, borderline hero worship for him. Like he's her, her mentor, the, the head researcher. I, I would say in a way even though she was maybe the brains behind the operation,

Laura:

Yeah.

Lilly:

But sort of seeing those rose colored glasses fall away was so meaningful both for her as a character and us as a reader.

Laura:

Yeah, I, I think especially because, Thea, what I find interesting about Thea is that she is, despite all of her talents, she's incredibly impressionable and she's impressionable because her entire life has been caring for her mother. So to get that approval from someone that she respects from Michael, let you say, it does become hero worship because she's never got that from anywhere else. And so it is a betrayal when he messes with Miriam. It is also a betrayal of her because she's like, no, I put you on a pedestal and now you've done something that is so terrible to someone I also care for, and there's no coming back for it. You've, you are not the person I thought you were. And what then does that say about her? That's what shakes her, I think.'cause she's like, oh, that's, well, that was my hero. So what does that make me?

Lilly:

Mm-hmm.

Sara:

It, yeah, it really forces her to think about what they have been doing. I think leading up to the events of, of this book, but also during the events of this book I mean, they, they do some pretty kind of awful stuff that she is complicit in.

Laura:

Yeah, I, and I think that's, like you say, the scales fall from her eyes and she realizes quite how horrifying it's been. And again, that's, that's what's quite nice about first person as well.'cause she is quite clinical in the way she accounts a lot of the things that she does throughout this book. And it almost puts you at a distance. But then when you start to think about it for five minutes, you're like, oh actually,

Lilly:

Mm-hmm.

Laura:

Medical ethics for you aren't great either. Here, Thea, we're we've, we've crossed over all those lines.

Lilly:

Well, in, in some ways it reminded me of the like. The zombie apocalypse storyline, right. Well, in some ways there are, humans have turned into monsters and are roaming the earth, so obvious parallel there. But my favorite is, is it the Day of the Dead? Is it that the third one, the third Romero movie where they have a test subject, it doesn't matter. I'm, I'm, I'm off. And they are, there is always that moment of. It. In order to actually cure this, we have to experiment on a zombie to find out what's going on and seeing that sort of from the other side of, okay, but if we do cure it, that means they're not these monsters anymore, which means we have been experimenting on humans all along and it just creates such a, a, a muddy situation.

Laura:

Yeah, and I think that's weird in the sense that the history of medicine is a little bit like that and we don't really want to look at it. I mean, one of the things I didn't put in the book, which would probably still have fitted was, you know, the way gynecology has mostly been developed on black women without pain relief because there was just this assumption that. They didn't feel that much pain, which is ludicrous and you know, racist. But that is where gynecology got a lot of its stuff from. And you think, okay, well we are not that far from that in our previous history with medicine. And so I think we recognize it when we see it in fiction as well, even if we don't know where we're drawing those links.

Lilly:

Absolutely.

Sara:

So we, moving on from the ethics of medical testing or the non non ethics of medical testing in this book we do get a little bit of what I would call a love triangle in the back half of this book between Thea Alex, the engineer, who is one of the survivors and then Vlad, who is the, the half sleepless who. It comes into to their little survivor's camp. And the relationship that she has with both of them is unhealthy in different ways. I would, I would say it's not to be clear, it's not a healthy love triangle.

Lilly:

There such a thing now is where I have to interrupt and say, I am the trash romance reader who is like, yes, give me the toxic romance. Give me the love triangle. I'm here a hundred percent.

Sara:

But could you tell us a little bit about like, developing this, this aspect of the story and why it was important to include?

Laura:

So I always knew that fear and Vladimir were, that was going to happen because. Much like her relationship with Michael, actually, he informs her of things and she challenges her, and she wants to be challenged. She wants someone who's cleverer than her. She wants to be recognized by someone who is cleverer than her. And in that sense, Vladimir plays on all of her. All of her insecurities without meaning to, in the sense that he just knows more than she does about what's going on. Alex was a surprise to me, actually. I wa there wasn't, initially, I wasn't intending for there to be a love triangle, and then I was writing that scene where she yells at him and he kissed her as I was writing. And I was like, wait, hold on. You weren't meant to get involved in this. How have, how have you, how have you done that? But actually it work? And I was like, okay. So this is sort of two halves of her. One is the man that. Okay. He goes a little bit west in the very final page of the book when he realizes she's chosen Vladimir over him. But generally he is the man who would treat her well, who maybe doesn't understand her, but would still be kind to her, would still sort of accept her. Vladimir is basically wrong on all counts. He's, he represents, you know, her mistakes. He represents all of her insecurities. But he also wants to help her. Although he, he gets to that point, I think, I don't think he starts off wanting to help her. So it's like, it's the love that she should maybe choose and the love that she's actually willing to accept. And yeah, she chooses, she, she, she chooses the half sleepless. She, she doesn't choose the, the man who loves her.'cause the man who loves her. Loves a version of her that she doesn't believe in. I don't think.

Lilly:

Well, that's her version of events. This is first person after

Laura:

Well, yes, and it's also, she, he recognizes something in her that she thinks is fake, but we can't really know if, if it is fake or whether, again, she's just lying to herself. She doesn't wanna believe it.

Lilly:

And isn't Vladimir the one who tells her like, that's not really you. So I think there might have been some ulterior motives there.

Laura:

exactly.

Lilly:

Not me over here already writing fan fiction. Don't worry about it.

Laura:

I have said multiple times, people keep asking me, when will you know you've made it? I said, when somebody writes found fiction of my characters, I will know that I've made it. If I go on AO three and I see like Vlad slash Theater on a, the, that's it, that's when I know I've made it.

Lilly:

Well, as is tradition for any love triangle. The first one will actually probably be Vlad slash Alex, but

Sara:

Yeah.

Laura:

and I would also accept

Lilly:

yeah.

Laura:

this works for me. I mean, the iterations that we could go through with that. There's many characters. How many, how many poly can we get in?

Lilly:

Yeah. The best kind of tangent. So, Vladimir, like I said, I'm so compelled by the, the, the toxic, mysterious, brooding love interest. So much of his history and backstory remain a mystery for the reader. So do you know, or is it also a mystery for you?

Laura:

Yes, sort of. I know what he's a stand-in for, so there are little hints throughout, which I'm pretty sure maybe only me and three other readers in the world will pick up on. But I'm gonna tell you all on the podcast what, what you might have missed. And that is that when he says to her, he talks, she gives him her name, and he talks to her and lists off the different versions of Thea that he knows. And he mentions Paso Thea from Greek mythology and. people who know the weirder niche, bits of Greek mythology will tell you that Paso, the was married to Hypnos, the Greek God of sleep. So Vlad is a standin for sleep itself. So he has been woken by the fact every person's awake now and he is made redundant and he has come to the tower to find out. Where his bloody sleepers are, like, why is nobody sleeping? I'm the god of sleep and nobody's, but he is also, you know, he doesn't have a neural chip. That is the big secret that you, you know, you realize there's a single neural chip blinking in the tower. That's her mother. There's nobody else in the tower with a neural chip.

Sara:

Wondering about that actually. I was thinking about that and, and going like, how is she, Hmm.

Laura:

yeah, Vladi Vladimir is, is. Has come to show her something. He has, he has cloaked himself in something that might change the path. He's giving them a chance to do better and he's disguising himself in a way that he knows they will find interesting. So in the sense of he's a stand in for an ancient Greek God, yes. I know his history within the universe of the novel. I'm not entirely sure what he was doing when he woke up and went, where the hell are my sleepers? Because that's sort of how he said when he tells her how he woke. That is true. That's how I see him waking up and being like, well, I'm just really confused. I don't, I dunno where everybody's gone. But yeah, so he's, he's, he's my little wild card. And I do, I love the brooding mysterious love interest too. I mean, he is, I mean, if we're gonna like things, I might say to my therapist, Thea chooses Vlad.'cause I would choose Vlad.

Sara:

I mean, yes.

Lilly:

So, but Vladimir knows who he is, right? Okay. So he's maybe not being truthful when he says he doesn't know his name, et cetera.

Laura:

No, he just can't really waltz in and be like,

Lilly:

Mm-hmm.

Laura:

Having said that, I think he is, when he first comes to the tower, he's not as all powerful as we might think, and he isn't all powerful. He's. He's been sort of shaken by what's happened as well. So I think there's an element. No, he does know who he is. He is lying in that respect. But he isn't sure what he's gonna do when he gets to the tower. He doesn't know what he's going to do. Theo Thea convinces him as much as he convinces her, I think.

Lilly:

So you mentioned the Alex complication sort of coming into existence as you were writing. How much do you plan when you write?

Laura:

I am my own worst nightmare. I don't plot at all. I start with a concept and a character usually. So there were a few things I knew about Awaken before I started. I knew who Thea was. I knew who Vladimir was. I knew that there was gonna be a neural chip. And I knew like her mother was sick and then I started writing. So, and I also, I write on a typewriter. My first drafts I write on a typewriter, so I can't edit as I go.'cause otherwise I will finish nothing. I will edit the first three chapters to death and never finish. So I was writing and how much I didn't know about this plot was it took me till three quarters of the way through the first draft before I realized that actually Thea's mother. Should be there. Initially I was, it was all gonna be in flashback. She was going to be missing. And so in the, towards the end of the third of the first draft, I went, oh no, she's obviously one of the sleepless, like, why would you not have done that? So I just started writing three quarters of the way through as though her mother had always been there. So if you read the first draft, you'd get to three quarters of the way through and be like, what'd you mean her mother? 60,000 words. What a what? So yeah, I don't plot at all. I have to write my way into the characters. And that does make for a catastrophic first draft, like so understand.

Sara:

So would like, were there any scenes that surprised you or would you say that the whole thing is just kind of a discovery and it all surprises you?

Laura:

I, I was gonna bit on, clarice and Hannibal Science of the Lambs, that interview thing. So I knew Thea and Vlad were gonna sort of be interviewing each other. And that was gonna happen and I was surprised by the midpoint. So when subject 0 0 1 escapes and she's in the chapel, didn't know that was gonna happen. I had her have a migraine and then I was like, oh. And now the monster escapes. Of course he escapes. And then wrote that scene that day. So. Things, major points do surprise, like you would be amazed by how little of the plot I know while I'm writing the first draft.

Lilly:

So how different is the final product from the first draft?

Laura:

Oh, I hope the final product is, is a lot different from the first draft. The, the basic points are still there. You wouldn't be able to understand the first draft because like I say, I just dropped. There was a initially a character called Chris, who was a porter, who about. 10,000 words in I decided wasn't doing anything, so I just stopped writing about him. So he just disappeared with no mention. After 10,000 words, Thea's mother came in at about 60,000 words. The rest of them sort of stayed within, within where I thought they were going to, but the ending was different and initially and I hated it and couldn't make it work.

Sara:

You mentioned that Dolly played a, a bigger part in the ending. That you originally had envisioned.

Laura:

Initially Dolly was going to have,'cause I think we see like a glimpse of her like te ringing the raven's neck at the very end. But initially she was gonna have a really, really protracted breakdown and just not be able to cope. And the original ending, which I didn't like in the end was that Edgar was gonna play a bigger part in like controlling the sleepless and it was gonna be a bit more of a surveillance thing that he was watching them all. Dolly was gonna lose, lose it completely at the concept of this and probably end up throwing herself off the tower, but I thought that was a bit too melodramatic for a character we didn't see enough of for it to. Work. Work. So yeah, I would've had to have done a really big rewrite for that to work. But yeah, Dolly and Edgar initially were gonna be the driving force of the ending, and then it turned out that wasn't gonna happen.

Lilly:

Well, thank you so much for joining us. Before we wrap up, what would you like readers to take away from this book?

Laura:

Oh, good question. I would like them to. Take away the, like you say, the history of medicine and stuff. I think I, like you say, the moral, the moral questions at the heart of the book are what I'm, I'm very interested in, but I am really interested in,'cause the book ends on a question. I'm interested for people to actually sit and think about that. Like what kind of a monster is she? Like, where do you draw the line for what she did and how does that make you feel and how would you then apply that to how you feel about other things? That's what I'd like people to take from it.

Sara:

Excellent.

Lilly:

Or maybe not

Sara:

Yeah.

Lilly:

but you know,

Laura:

Yeah.

Lilly:

some definition of the word.

Sara:

It, it is a good thing to, to sit and think about, you know, for, for a little bit you

Laura:

then you have to go and have a nap, actually. Yeah. Another thing I would like people to take away is take more naps. This is nap propaganda. Sleep is important. Everybody go lie down, wrap a blanket, have a nap.

Sara:

We are, we are. Team Nap here.

Lilly:

Yes. It's important for the experience of humanity.

Laura:

Exactly. Napping. Yeah. You are helping humanity by having a nice big sleep.

Sara:

Mm-hmm. Agreed. Laura, thank you so much for coming on. Before you leave, can you tell us a little bit about any current projects and where you can be found on the internet?

Laura:

So I'm working on book two at the moment, which I haven't sold yet, so I dunno how much I can say, but it is more folk horror than gothic horror. So.

Sara:

Exciting.

Laura:

Hopefully we'll see that at some point. You can find me on Twitter at Tiny Writer Laura, or on Instagram at Tiny Meets World. I also have a website, but I only made it recently and I actually can't remember the address, so don't bother finding my website until I've done something with it. Please.

Lilly:

All right. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for spending your evening with us. This has been a fantastic conversation for every definition of the word.

Laura:

Well, thank you very much for having me. It's been absolutely lovely.

Sara:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Fiction Fans.

Lilly:

Come disagree with us! We're on BlueSky and Instagram at fictionfanspod. You can also email us at fictionfanspod at gmail. com or leave a comment on YouTube.

Sara:

If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Lilly:

We also have a Patreon, where you can support us and find exclusive episodes and a lot of other nonsense.

Sara:

Thanks again for listening, and may your villains always be defeated. Bye!